{"id":3463351,"url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-simulation-software-engineer","title":"Simulation Software Engineer","company":{"id":15878,"name":"Zipline","domain":"zipline.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/zipline","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"middle","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Ann Arbor, United States","South San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":180000,"max":220000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":220000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Digital Twin","optional":false},{"name":"Physical AI","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-13T22:08:03Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-15","last_verified_at":"2026-10-30T21:21:49Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":109,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":109},"description":"About Zipline\nZipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products. \nOur customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations.\nOur system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe.\nWe operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds.\nAbout You and The Role\nZipline is scaling the world's largest autonomous drone delivery network-a pioneering Physical AI system-delivering life-saving medical supplies and commercial goods globally. Our commitment to safety and exponential scale demands an industrial-grade virtual test environment, decoupled from physical hardware. That’s the mission of our Simulation team.\nWe are seeking a Simulation Software Engineer to build and evolve the core infrastructure that validates our entire robotics fleet software. This is not a standard simulation role; it is deep, systems-level software engineering focused on creating high-performance, high-fidelity digital twins that enable deterministic, faster-than-realtime testing of all autonomous safety-critical flight logic, cloud connectivity, and vehicle coordination across thousands of mission scenarios.\nThis role is absolutely critical for the safety and reliability of Zipline's real-world Physical AI deployment. If you are driven by the challenge of integrating complex flight software with synthetic environments, real hardware, and advanced time-manipulation to rigorously test an autonomous system, we want to hear from you!\nThis is not a niche role within Autonomy-it’s a company-wide enabler.\nIf your passion lies in building infrastructure that unlocks fast, safe iteration across multiple engineering domains, this role is built for you.\nWhat You'll Do\nBuild the simulation platform: Develop the reusable infrastructure that powers simulation across the company, including execution, scheduling, orchestration, APIs, and developer tooling.\nIntegrate with production software: Build interfaces that allow flight software, cloud services, embedded software, and hardware to execute inside deterministic virtual environments.\nScale simulation: Scale from single-vehicle debugging to fleet-scale testing across thousands of scenarios in CI.\nPartner with engineers: Support teams building new tests, debugging failures, improving workflows, and expanding simulation capabilities.\nWhy This Role is Cross-Cutting\nThe Flight Software team uses simulation to validate onboard mission logic.\nThe Test team uses it to explore pre-flight conditions and troubleshoot real-world anomalies.\nThe Cloud team uses it to model server interactions like map updates, delivery instructions, and real-time comms.\nFull system Hardware-In-The-Loop testing framework uses simulation for flight software validation\nThe Embedded and Ground teams use it to validate system integration, safety cases, and operational resilience.\nAnd the CI/CD pipeline relies on simulation to catch regressions before they ever reach a flight zone.\nWhy You'll Bring\n4+ years of professional software engineering experience in C++ or Rust (Rust experience is a strong plus).\nDemonstrated ability to reason about large software systems, APIs, concurrency, debugging, and software architecture.\nDeep experience architecting, building, or maintaining complex robotics, aerospace, or distributed systems simulations/digital twins.\nExpertise in concepts like time synchronization, inter-process communication, and determinism within a systems-level or real-time context.\nFamiliarity with physical modeling, kinematics, dynamics, or robotics simulation concepts\nA passion for building enabling infrastructure and tools that allow Zipline engineers to simulate faster, test earlier, and deploy safer.\nBonus: Experience scaling simulation in CI, HIL (Hardware-in-the-Loop), or formal verification methods.\nLocation & Logistics \nThis role is onsite in the Bay Area due to frequent cross-functional collaboration, access to flight test and HIL labs, and operational incident response.\nOccasional travel to field sites or test ranges may be required.\nMust be eligible to work in the US\nWhat Else You Need To Know\nThe starting cash range for this role is $180,000 - $220,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.\nZipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.\nWe value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!\nVoluntary Self-Identification\nFor government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.\nAs set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7094,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Drones & UAVs","Delivery","Logistics"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-29T14:36:18Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 63 · green card filings: 13","filings_12m":63,"filings_prev_12m":47,"green_card_filings_12m":13,"median_offered_wage_usd":170658,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":18}],"liveness":{"score":9,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.331,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":108,"expected_fill_days":26,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":220000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-simulation-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/zipline-simulation-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T23:05:07Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":14177,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":15878},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=15878"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fzipline-simulation-software-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fzipline-simulation-software-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fzipline-simulation-software-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/zipline-simulation-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fzipline-simulation-software-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3463351}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"zipline.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3463351},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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